LECTUPvES 



ox 

 MOLLUSCA; OR " SHELL-FISH" AND THEIR ALLIES. 



PREPARED FOR THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 



BY PHILIP P. CARPENTER, B. A., Ph. D., 



OF WARRINGTON, ENGLAND. 



Who has not admired the beauty of shells? — the rich luster of the 

 Cowries; the glossy polish of the Olives; the brilliant painting of the 

 Cones ; the varied layers of the Cameos ; the exquisite nacre of Mother- 

 of-pearl? Who has not listened to the mysterious "sound of the sea" 

 in the Whelks and Helmets, or wondered at the many chambers of the 

 Nautilus? What child ever went to the sea shore without picking up 

 shells; or what lady ever spurned them as ornaments of her parlor? 

 Shells are at once the attraction of the untutored savage, the delight 

 of the refined artist, the wonder of the philosophic zoologist, and the 

 most valued treasures of the geologist. They adorn the sands of sea- 

 girt isles and continents now; and they form the earliest "footprints 

 of the sands of time" in the history of our globe. The astronomer, 

 wandering through boundless space with the grandest researches of his 

 intellect, and the most subtle workings of his analysis, may imagine, 

 indeed, the history of past time and speculate on the formation of 

 globes ; but his science presents us with no records of the past. But 

 the geologist, after watching the ebb of the ocean tide, examines into 

 the soil on the surface of the earth and finds in it a book of chronicles, 

 the letters of which are not unknown hieroglyphics, but familiar shells. 

 He writes the history of each species, antedating by millions of years 

 the first appearance of man upon this planet, the abrasion of the Mis- 

 sissippi Valley, or the roar of the Niagara at Queenston Heights. He 

 searches deeper and deeper into the rocky crust of the globe, still find- 

 ing the same types in older characters. As he climbs the rocks of 

 Trenton or Montmorenci, he treads on the tide-ripples, the rain drops, 

 the trails of living creatures in the ancient Silurian sea, which he in- 

 terprets by the Rosetta Stone of Chelsea Beach or Charleston Harbor ; 

 and as he reverently unlocks the dark recesses which contain the tradi- 

 tions of the early ages, between the dead igneous rocks and the oceanic 

 deposits which entomb the remains of life, the first objects which meet 

 his gaze are the remains of a thin, horny shell, so like those now 

 living in the Atlantic and Pacific waters, that the "footprint" enables 

 him to reconstruct a Brachiopod with delicate ciliated arms and com- 



